Question 1

Will my white label travel website show up on Google when people search for holidays in my area?

Accepted Answer

Yes, a white label travel website can be found on Google, but being listed and ranking well are two different things, so it is worth being realistic. The site runs on your own domain name, so search engines treat it as your business and the pages can be crawled and indexed in the normal way. What nobody can promise you is a position in the results, because that depends on your content, how strong your local competition is and how Google decides to rank things at any given time. The part of the site that tends to attract searches is the ordinary content, not the booking engine. Live search results pulled from airlines and hotel suppliers change constantly and are usually not the pages that bring people in from Google. Pages you write yourself about the destinations you sell, the kind of trips you specialise in, your location and your contact details are what search engines can actually read and rank. Whether you can edit page titles, descriptions and add your own text pages or a blog will depend on the plan you are on, so please check that before you build your plan around it. There are also some basics that make a real difference and are within your control. Make sure the domain is registered in your own name, that the site loads properly on a phone, that your opening hours and address are consistent everywhere, and that you set up a free Google Business Profile for local searches. The sensible next step is to ask us which content and page editing tools are included in your plan, then start by writing a small number of honest pages about the trips you genuinely sell rather than trying to cover everything at once.

Question 2

Can I stop my staff from giving discounts or changing fares without my approval in the travel agency software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can control what your staff are allowed to change, and discount or fare editing is one of the things that is usually locked down by role. The normal way this works is that each staff login is given a role, and the role decides what that person can see and do. A counter staff member might be able to search, book and issue, while only a manager or owner role can alter a markup, apply a discount, or override the selling price that the system worked out. If someone without that permission opens a booking, the discount field is either hidden or greyed out, so they cannot change it by accident or on purpose. Where agencies find this most useful is setting a discount ceiling rather than blocking discounts completely. Instead of stopping your staff from ever reducing a fare, you let them give up to a certain amount on their own, and anything beyond that has to be approved by a manager before the booking can be completed. That keeps your counter moving for small goodwill gestures while protecting your margin on the bigger ones. You can also usually see a record of who changed a price and when, which settles arguments at month end. I should be honest that how fine grained this gets depends on your plan and on how the software is set up for you. Some setups offer a simple two level split between staff and admin, while others let you build your own roles field by field. Approval workflows, where a request waits for a manager to accept it, are not available everywhere either. It is also worth remembering that the software can only control what happens inside it, so a staff member taking cash at the counter is a separate matter for your own office rules. The best next step is to list the handful of things you genuinely do not want your counter staff touching, then ask us to confirm which of those your current plan can enforce and whether approval limits are included.

Question 3

Can I sell the budget airlines through the same flight search as the normal airlines, or do I need something separate for them?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the low cost airlines can show up in the same search as the full service ones, so your staff only work in one screen and compare everything side by side. The search goes out to all the sources connected to your account at once and brings the results back together, sorted by price or timing, and your agent books whichever option the customer picks without switching to another website. What is worth knowing is that the two types of airline behave differently once you get past the search. Full service carriers usually come through the big airline reservation systems, while budget carriers are normally connected directly to the airline. That means budget fares are often sold as separate one way journeys, bags and seats and meals are nearly always paid extras rather than included, and any change or cancellation has to follow that airline's own rules rather than the usual ticketing rules your staff may be used to. I should be honest that which budget airlines you actually get depends on the suppliers connected to your account and on your plan. Some carriers do not sell through travel agencies at all, and others only allow it under their own arrangements, so nobody can offer you every low cost airline in the world. Payment can differ as well, since certain carriers want the card charged at the moment of booking. The best next step is to send us the list of budget airlines your customers ask for most often, and we can tell you which of them are available on your setup before you start selling.

Question 4

Can I put my own logo and domain name on the white label travel website so customers don't know it was built by someone else?

Accepted Answer

Yes, that is the whole point of a white label portal, so the site normally runs on your own domain name and carries your own agency name, logo and colours. You point the domain you already own at the portal, a security certificate is set up so the address shows as secure in the browser, and from then on it looks and behaves like a website your agency owns outright. In most setups you can change the logo, the colour scheme, the homepage banner images, your contact details and your about us, terms and privacy pages. Booking confirmations, vouchers and invoices can usually carry your name and logo too, and be sent from an address on your own domain. How much of this you can edit yourself from the admin area, and how much needs to be done for you, depends on the plan you are on, so it is worth asking before you sign up rather than after. Being honest about the limits, some things come from the airlines, hotels and suppliers and cannot be rebranded. Hotel photos, hotel descriptions, airline names, fare rules and baggage information all arrive from the supplier and will appear as they are written. If an airline or hotel sends its own message to the passenger it will carry their branding, and your payment page may show the name of the payment company handling the card, which is normal and customers expect it. Before you go live, open the site on a phone as well as a desktop, make a test booking and look closely at the confirmation email, the voucher and the invoice to check your branding appears where you want it.

Question 5

Can I add a booking I made directly with a supplier into the software so my customer's whole trip is in one place?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can add a booking you arranged directly with a supplier so it sits alongside everything else for that customer. This is usually called a manual or offline booking, and it exists because no agency buys every single thing through one screen. You type the details in yourself and the software then treats it as part of that customer's trip. What you can record normally covers the supplier name, their reference number, the travel dates, the passenger names, what you paid and what you charged. Once it is saved, the booking appears in the customer's file and in your sales and margin reports, so your month end numbers reflect the whole business rather than only the part that came through the portal. Many agencies use this for cruises, rail, visas, insurance and local ground arrangements. The honest limit is that a manual booking is only as current as what you typed. There is no live link to the supplier, so if they move a time or cancel something, nothing updates by itself and no alert is raised. Any change or refund still has to be sorted out with that supplier directly and then edited in the software so your records match. Whether the entry form is available at all, and which of your staff may use it, can also depend on your plan and how your portal was set up. Have a look in the booking section of your own system for an option to add a booking manually, and if you cannot find it, ask your account contact whether it can be turned on for you.

Question 6

Do I have to pay for a hotel at the time of booking, or can my customer pay at the hotel when they check in?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can sell rooms that the guest pays for at the hotel, but only where the supplier offers that rate, so it will not be an option on every property. Hotel suppliers broadly give two kinds of rates. Prepaid rates are settled at the moment of booking, so the money comes out of your balance or your credit line straight away and the guest arrives with nothing left to pay for the room. Pay at hotel rates let the guest settle at the front desk on arrival or at checkout, and your agency is only involved in the commission side. Both kinds can sit next to each other in the same set of search results. Our hotel booking API passes through whatever the supplier sends, so each rate carries its own payment terms and your staff can see which kind they are looking at before they confirm anything. If you would rather only sell one kind, we can filter your portal so that only pay at hotel rates appear, but be aware this will cut down how many hotels and rooms your customers see, because a good deal of the cheaper inventory is prepaid only. How you actually settle the prepaid side depends on the arrangement you have with each supplier and on your plan with us. Some agencies work from a deposit balance they top up, some are granted credit terms by the supplier directly, and some pass a card at the time of booking. We cannot promise credit terms on your behalf, as that decision belongs to the supplier. Before you go live, please check with us which suppliers are connected to your account and what each one expects by way of payment, and train your staff to read the payment terms shown against a rate rather than assume, since two rooms in the same hotel can be on different terms.

Question 7

If I have to cancel a flight ticket I already issued, can I do the refund through the software or do I have to deal with the airline myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can start the cancellation and the refund request from inside the software, and the request goes to the airline through the API without you having to call or email them. You open the booking, choose the cancel or refund option, and the system sends it on and records what came back. What you cannot do is decide the outcome, because the airline rules decide how much comes back and when. It helps to know there are really two different things here. If you act very soon after issuing, within the window the airline allows for the same day, the ticket can often be voided, which means it is treated as though it was never issued and very little or nothing is held back. After that window closes it becomes a proper refund, and the fare rules take over. The airline may keep a cancellation charge, may keep some taxes, and in the case of a fully non refundable fare may return nothing at all beyond the odd recoverable tax. Be aware that not every airline supports this automatically. Low cost carriers and some fare types do not offer an automated refund through the API, so the request becomes a manual one that is handled by the supplier or the airline directly, which takes longer. The refund figure you see on screen can also be an estimate until the airline confirms it, and the money normally goes back the same way the booking was paid, so your customer will not get it instantly. Before you issue anything, read the fare rules on the booking so you know what is refundable, and once a cancellation is in, tell your customer the amount is confirmed only when the airline confirms it.

Question 8

Will the hotel search results show photos and a proper description of the hotel, or just the name and the price?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the photos, description and facility details come through with the prices, so your customer sees more than just a hotel name and a rate. A search normally returns the property name, address, star rating, room type and a set of images, along with a written description and a list of facilities such as parking, wifi, pool or airport transfer. How good that content is depends on the supplier, and it is only fair to say so. Well known city hotels usually arrive with plenty of good photographs and a full description. Small guesthouses in quieter destinations can come with only a line or two of text and one or two pictures, sometimes written in the local language. Content also comes from a separate feed to the live price and is refreshed on a schedule, so a recent refurbishment may not show straight away. If you have more than one supplier connected, the same hotel can arrive with different photos and text from each, and the system can be set to prefer one supplier's content so your pages stay consistent. On most plans you can also add your own description and images for the hotels you sell most often, which agencies with good local knowledge often prefer to do. Run a search on a few properties you sell regularly, look at what comes back, and tell us where the content looks thin so we can advise what can be improved.

Question 9

I have my own deals with a couple of airlines, can those fares show up in my flight search along with the normal ones?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases they can, but it depends entirely on how your deal has been set up with the airline. Private or negotiated fares that have been filed electronically against your own agency credentials will usually come back in a search once those credentials are used for the request. They then sit in the results next to the normal published fares, and we can usually label them so your staff can see at a glance which fare is your own deal. Where it gets harder is when an airline has given you a deal on paper, as a rate sheet or a spreadsheet or just an agreement in writing. There is nothing for a search to read in that case, so those fares cannot appear automatically. The practical options are to load them as a manual product that your staff select, or to keep selling them offline and record the booking in the system afterwards so your reporting stays complete. With that approach the rules and availability will not refresh on their own, so somebody has to keep them up to date. It is also worth remembering that negotiated fares normally come with conditions, such as only certain routes, booking classes, cabins or travel dates. A search will only return your fare when the request actually matches those conditions, so a quote that falls outside the deal will quietly come back at the published price instead. Which fare sources you can switch on together can also depend on your plan and on what each supplier permits. A good next step is to gather your airline agreements and check for each one whether the fare is filed against your own credentials or only given to you in writing, then send us that list so we can tell you which ones will show in search and which need handling another way.

Question 10

Can my customers make an account on my travel website and look at their own bookings without ringing my office?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases they can. A white label travel portal normally includes a customer login area where travellers register with their own details, and once they are signed in they can see the bookings they made on your site. That takes a lot of routine calls away from your staff, because the person who just wants to check their flight time or find their hotel voucher again can look it up themselves at any hour. What they see inside that area is usually their upcoming and past trips, the booking reference, the travel dates and passenger names, and a copy of the confirmation or voucher they can view or download again. Many setups also let the traveller save their own passport and contact details so the next booking is quicker to fill in. Exactly which of these appear can depend on your plan and on how your portal has been set up, so it is worth confirming what is included in yours rather than assuming. Be aware that viewing a booking and changing one are two different things. Letting a customer cancel or amend their own trip depends on the supplier rules behind that booking and on whether you choose to switch that option on at all. Plenty of agencies deliberately keep changes in their own hands so staff can check penalties and quote the right amount, and send the customer a request form instead. Bookings your team entered manually outside the portal may also not show in the customer login area. The next step is to ask to see the customer login area on a demo portal, and decide which actions you are happy for travellers to do on their own and which you want coming to your office.